As a beauty blogger, you are doing noble work. You boldly go where others fear to tread, testing all the latest and greatest products you can get your perfectly manicured hands on. Sadly all of your hard work will go unappreciated unless it’s accompanied by eye-catching images; we want to hear your thoughts and opinions on new products but we want to see what all those beautiful swatches and palettes look like too.
If you’ve yet to start snapping away on your blog, or feel your pictures could do with a bit of an upgrade, here’s our guide to creating engaging beauty blog images.
Highlights
Lighting is all important in photography; it’ll be hard for your reader to see the exact shade of that new foundation you’re trying out or just how glittery that bronzer is if you haven’t lit the photo properly. As a rule, the flash function on most smartphones is pretty rubbish – it tends to be too bright and too white, washing out images and lending them an unattractive hue. Even if you’re using a proper camera, flashes can often add harsh shadows and wreak havoc with colour. For the best snaps, the sun is your friend. Even if you can’t get outdoors, use the natural light from a window to take your shot. You’ll achieve a much softer, more attractive looking photo than you would using your camera’s flash.
Compose Yourself
Although you’re not taking images for an art gallery, having a little knowledge of composition can help you take pictures your readers will love. Take a look at the bblogger images some beauty companies share on Instagram; instead of placing a product in the middle of the image and snapping away, the best pho-blog-raphers (yes, we just made that up) will often snap a bottle from an interesting angle or contrast the bright colours of a new lipstick collection against a clean white background to make them pop. Experiment with the functions on your camera or phone and see what arty results you can come up with. Good, well-composed pictures will take your blog from boring to beautiful.
Perfect Your Selfie
Like it or not, selfies are a huge part of a beauty blogger’s lifestyle. You don’t have to show your face on your blog but doing so not only helps readers to see just how great (or terrible!) a particular product looks on a real person but also makes your blog much more personable. Some of the most successful makeup bloggers and vloggers gathered millions of followers because of their personalities as well as their makeup know-how (hello Zoella!) so it can be nice for readers to be able to put a face to a blog.
There are loads of guides to taking the perfect selfie out there but essentially it all comes down to lighting and angle. As you would with other shots, make sure to seek out soft natural light and try to use interesting composition to take your selfies. Not only will the product you’re reviewing look great, you will too!
